Day 6 - English Immersion and Relaxation Time

We started Day 6 with the last concert from the Highlands/San Andres crew. The band played a bit shorter of a concert for some of the students from San Andres Scots School. It's a very prestigious high school in Buenos Aires. The band is shown in the picture below. They really deserve all of our thanks for doing such an amazing job over the past week. It was a pleasure for all of us to watch and support you guys. Muchas Gracias!

After the concert we packed into a bus and headed over to the city of Villa Jardin for a service project. Camilla and some others from San Andres brought us to Jardin Maternal San Benito to meet the children and help them learn English. They ranged in age from 45 days to 11 years old. The community center was basically a place where local working parents could receive free childcare while they were gone each day. We tried to help out as best we could by preparing games and activities to help the children learn English. Since the teachers at Jardin had already begun this process, our games were geared towards reinforcing what they had already learned while teaching them sentence structure and vocabulary through conversation.

At the same time, Jason Fritz and some of the guys cleaned the walls outside the building with brushes and brooms. We used a 1 to 4 bleach to water solution and scrubbed down the walls until they were suitable to paint. Normally this would be easy work. However, easy work is too easy and as Jason said before the trip started, "Let's not pray for everything to go so smoothly as it's the hard times that teach us the most." (That's a paraphrase Jason so if you're reading this please make corrections where you see fit). The hard part was scrubbing the walls down in pouring rain. Although we complained at times, it was a lot of fun and we are thankful to God for the ability and means to do His work. We will always have that memory now. We couldn't even be bitter towards the guys and ladies who stayed inside as any teacher of young children knows how hard THAT work is. I did not envy them one bit (which is not to say that the children weren't a pleasure to be around). The only bad part of this cleaning project was the fact that Nate may have gotten sick from the cold weather. He was probably out there the longest, so if you're reading this Nate, thank you for your sacrifice. We ended the day around 4 and headed back to our homes to spend the rest of the night with our host families.

Friends and Family: Please keep the teachers and workers at Jardin Maternal San Benito in your prayers. Please pray for their donations and finances to keep coming as they do not require the parents to pay for the childcare. The women here are absolutely wonderful people who deserve our prayers and support.